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Rogue Israeli settlements in West Bank continue
Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit
International Herald Tribune - Dec 7, 2007
http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=8642614
Rogue Israeli settlements in West Bank continue
By Isabel Kershner
SHVUT AMI OUTPOST, West Bank: For two months, Jewish youths have been
renovating an old stone house on this muddy hilltop in the northern
West Bank. The house is not theirs, however.
It belongs to a Palestinian family, and the seizure of it, along with
the land around it, for a new settlement outpost is a violation of
Israeli law. But although the police have evicted the group five times,
they keep coming back.
Yedidya Slonim, 16, one of the renovators here, who grew up in another
West Bank settlement, Tzofim, said of the police: "We come back
straight away, as soon as they've gone. They come every week for half a
day. It doesn't bother us so much."
The cat-and-mouse contest here lays bare a core dilemma of the
Israeli-Palestinian dispute: Israel has pledged that it will permit no
new settlements in the territory it has occupied since the 1967 war,
allow no more expropriation of Palestinian land and dismantle
unauthorized outposts - like this one - erected since March 2001, but
it has never applied the muscle needed to do so.
"Shvut Ami is a chronicle of failure of law enforcement," said Michael
Sfard, an Israeli lawyer who represents the Palestinian owners of the
house on behalf of Yesh Din, an Israeli volunteer organization that
fights for Palestinian rights. In this respect, he said, the area is "a
jungle."
So the settlers continue building a patchwork of communities to try to
preclude the drawing of a border between Israel and a future
Palestinian state. At the vanguard are the hilltop youth, teenagers
like Yedidya, who work to complicate the demographic map ever more.
A settler organization called The Land of Israel Faithful has promised
to set up another seven outposts over the eight-day Hanukkah holiday -
and to "strengthen" Shvut Ami.
According to Peace Now, an Israeli advocacy group that tracks
settlement activity, most of the hundred or so outposts already in
existence are built at least partially on private Palestinian land.
Shvut Ami sits across a valley from Mitzpeh Ishai, a new neighborhood
of the Jewish settlement of Kedumim. Kedumim was established in the
1970s between the Palestinian villages of Funduk, Kadum and Imaten,
about 11 kilometers, or 7 miles, east of the 1967 lines.
Most of the world considers all Jewish settlement in the West Bank a
violation of international law. The Israeli government asserts that the
territory is disputed. The hilltop youth believe it was promised to
them by God.
Sometimes, a price is paid in blood. On Nov. 19, a local settler, Ido
Zoldan, 29, was shot and killed in his car by Palestinian gunmen at the
entrance to Funduk. Zoldan, who grew up in Kedumim, had worked in his
father's construction company, which builds settlement homes all over
the West Bank.
The Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, a militia affiliated with the mainstream
Fatah movement headed by the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, took
credit for the attack. Three suspects have since been detained - all
members of Abbas's security forces from the village of Kadum.
Five nights after the killing, hundreds of settlers converged at the
entrance of Funduk in protest. They rampaged through the village,
sma****ng the windows of houses and cars.
Villagers said the Israeli soldiers and police officers accompanying
the protesters mostly stood aside while the settlers ran wild.
Military officials said the Funduk protest had not been authorized by
the army. Soldiers and police officers had dispersed the riot,
detaining two settlers and two Palestinian villagers for throwing
stones, they said.
But for years, the settlers have exploited the ambivalence displayed
toward them by the Israeli authorities.
The Shvut Ami outpost sits on private Palestinian land inherited by the
two wives and children of Abd al-Ghani Salah Amar, of Kadum, according
to do***entation seen by The New York Times.
Amar built the stone house in 1963, 10 years before he died. The
roughly 17 acres, or 7 hectares, of land are planted with hundreds of
olive and almond trees, some figs and some vines. The estate is managed
by one of Amar's daughters, Badriya Amar, 61, a widow who still lives
in Kadum.
Amar filed a complaint with the Israeli police in early October for
trespassing on her family land. Micky Rosenfeld, a police spokesman,
said the owner****p do***ents were being examined by the authorities for
authenticity.
In the meantime, the site has been declared a closed military zone.
Behind the settler youths who are building here are the guiding hands
of adults. One of the leading ideologues of the outpost movement is
Daniella Weiss, a former mayor of Kedumim. Yedidya said that "someone"
from Kedumim connected them to the water mains, and local sup****ters
bring over food and raise funds. Nachman Zoldan, Ido's father, helped
out a lot in the beginning; Ido also provided equipment and advice
before he was killed.
Yedidya said the outpost's synagogue would be named in his memory. Ido
was supposed to help put down the floors.
Based on experience, there is no guarantee when Shvut Ami - Hebrew for
"my people's return" - will be restored to Amar.
Another illegal outpost, Migron, was established on private Palestinian
land in 2002. More than 40 families now live there in trailer homes.
Peace Now successfully petitioned Israel's Supreme Court in 2006 to
order its removal, but in Migron, nothing has changed. At the latest
hearing, on Nov. 1, the Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, asked for
a two-month extension to allow him to formulate a comprehensive plan
for the removal of illegal outposts.
Amar last visited her orchards in early November, to try to pick a few
olives. She was chased away by the settlers, she said. She was speaking
by telephone because the only road to Kadum had been blocked by the
army since the killing of Zoldan.
Yedidya suggested that Amar could move to Jordan or Egypt or one of the
other Arab states.
"God gave this to us," he said. "Now that we're here, I don't think
we're going to move."
(c) 2007 The International Herald Tribune
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